ONCE upon a time, a doctor’s consulting room was as safe as a confessional. You could say what you liked confident that, barring very exceptional circumstances, it would go no further. No more. Two legal cases, one in Germany and one still ongoing in the UK, show how the limits of patient confidentiality are being tested, and how this challenges long-established medical norms.

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At issue is how to define a patient in an era of genetic testing. If a test shows that I carry a disease-causing gene, that …